The Book-lover vs.Technology

My entire life has been paved by books. 

The literature I have encountered as I have grown up has shaped my personality. From the early days of Where the Wild Things Are and Slinky Malinky, to endless summer holidays reading Enid Blyton and Eva Ibbotson, my childhood was accompanied by these literary friends. Now I find myself welcomed into the world of Maggie O’Farrell, Patrick Gale and the ever hilarious Caitlin Moran. Books have been my constant companion from infancy, through teen-dom and now into early adulthood. Yet with the rise of the Kindle and the infamous E-book, I am concerned about the future role of the beloved hardback and paperback books in our screen savvy world.

 I do not own a Kindle and I have also never downloaded an E-book, but it is obvious that there are many merits surrounding these innovations. After all, Kindles enable you to be able to take as many works of literature with you anywhere that you want, on the train, in a plane, to a far flung corner of the planet (incidentally, I find advertisements of people reading Kindles on the beach intensely irritating and very unrealistic. The combination of water, sand and sun cream seems just as disastrous with an electronic plastic kindle as with a book, surely?! WHAT IF YOUR ICECREAM DRIPPED ONTO THE SCREEN?? What if SAND got into the inner mechanism, causing it to EXPLODE?? Or if a bee stung you, causing you to leap up and inadvertently THROW YOUR KINDLE INTO THE SEA??) Anyway, apparently they make holiday reading a great deal easier. They also provide fantastic assistance for the short sighted and visually impaired. In terms of publishing and selling books, E-books and Kindles also speed up this process. It is much cheaper and faster to publish literature via an E-book, and the same can be said for the Kindle. Therefore arguably this entire concept is making reading accessible to almost everyone, therefore it cannot be criticised. It is PROGRESS.

Yet, this can be faulted. The message that this progress implies is that literature should be produced with as little fuss as possible, giving it absolutely no value whatsoever. It must be cheap and as easy to produce - otherwise, what is the point? If we want to read something, we must  be able to download it instantly, without the tiresome business of going into a book shop, selecting a book, interacting with the bookseller and then leaving, exhausted after all of this action. Don’t get me wrong – I want everyone to be free to read whatever and however they choose. After all, the production of the first paperback book by Penguin in 1935 was viewed suspiciously compared to the ‘proper’ hardback book. But I do not understand why literature must be unceremoniously shoved aside into a mind-set where speed and a low price is a necessity for the production of books.

What sort of life is it if everything must be measured to how easily it can be made and how cost efficient it is? We’ve seen its faults with the clothing and food industry so why is it not recognised in the literature industry? All this does is teach society that the consumer culture of instant results and cheap products matters more than actually enjoying the wonderful things, such as books, that get handed to us on a plate.

I suppose I am also lamenting the loss for future literary enthusiastic future generations. Bedrooms that were lined with bookshelves will be bare – a dust ball will blow past and sigh, as it cannot cling onto a Kindle. This image may prove a plus to a Kindle fan with a hatred for dust. No books  = no mess! It’s a win-win situation! Yet I would much prefer to have a dusty room full of books to a spotless room containing empty bookshelves and a hard plastic screen bearing a story.

“A room without books is like a body without a soul”- Cicero